What Can We Do to Instil CONFIDENCE to an Introvert Child?

Samara’s parents were happy about her academics, but…

The very decent father was sitting in front of me along with her 4th grader daughter and his concerned wife. Both of the parents are really very courteous, sensible and concerned. The father told me in a soft voice “She is good in her studies, but whenever some strangers come in our house, she will find the furthest corner, whenever, we go for an unfamiliar get together, she will simply stick to her mother or will pick up a book in one corner, the teachers in the class always complain that she doesn’t participate in class discussions by her choice, unless we ask her! I don’t know what is she so shy about! We both try to encourage her. But…”

He took a pause with the unfinished sentence, and gave a fatherly staring at his daughter, the mom was also looking at the daughter with an ambiguous smile! The person, the little life, who was the topic of the conversation, sitting exactly between the mumma and papa and opposite to me, just kept her eyes down, to the floor and was scratching the corner of the table with her nails silently! Probably sunk into the situational dis-comfort or awkwardness or a feeling of self-doubt?

Samara was my student for a long time, afterwards. I came to know her for a long time and kind of revealed her inner world! She is INTROVERT, but have a beautiful analytical mind, she could make friends of her own choice and could take the relationship deeper. Introversion is her choice, a biological trait, but often misunderstood as SUBMISSIVENESS. She was not submissive, as I revealed through my studies,researches and which was proved later with her performances in different national level competitions, but it could be worse if the parents would have continued to misunderstood her introversion as submissiveness and would have criticized repetitively for her behavior to push her for extroversion.